lake

The sister-in-law of one of my ex-girlfriend’s contacted me a couple months ago about capturing a photo for a home improvement project. She is refinishing a room in their house and wanted me to recreate a photo that she found on a magazine cover. Her end goal is to get a large canvas print of the photo to hang on the wall in the newly refinished room.

Below is the photo of the magazine cover she sent to me in a text message showing the print on the wall she wanted me to replicate.

The requirements were as follows…

Capture a clear blue sky, the horizon line, and blue water.

Note that the horizon line is not straight in the example she sent. That was the only thing that I did not capture in the recreated photo. I made sure the horizon line was straight so it didn’t look like you were looking at a photo taken from a sinking boat or feel like you were on a sinking boat when looking at it mounted on a wall.

I did an initial test round of shots at the same location that I snapped the “Sunrise” photo last year (August 2013). Being that it was a test round, and the conditions weren’t perfect (cloudy), I was able to tell if that location would be good for when the conditions were perfect.

I also planned on heading into Oscoda, MI the last time we were camping to try to capture the photo on the beach shooting into Lake Huron, but the weather conditions that weekend were very poor, so I didn’t even attempt the shot.

On the afternoon of October 23, 2014, I happened to look outside and noticed there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. The sky was also nice and blue due to the solar elevation angle being lower (24.80° to be exact) since fall was in full effect. Perfect conditions for the photo I needed to capture!

It was around 3:35 PM Eastern when I hopped into the car with my camera and headed to the location where I took the initial test round of shots. I took 39 photos total and ended up using the very first photo, taken at 3:55 PM Eastern.